How To Spy On Competitors
It may seem hard to believe but having competitors is a good thing. If you have no competition, there is something wrong with your product-market match. If so, you need to identify your product-market relevance through a customer survey like this: If you are a start-up looking for funding, keys prefer to look at your list of competitors instead of asking if you are very innovative and if you have no competition.
At the same time, competition is a problem – competitors pull customers away from you and make it a tactic to acquire customers.
The truth is, your competitors may excel at certain business activities, and may even cause you to exit the market.
But to spy on competitors will help them compete and find holes in their strategy.
How to Spy on Competitors – 10 Winning Techniques
Subscribe to Newsletter and Social Media
This is where you need to start. Follow all the competitors you know on social media, subscribe to newsletters, and watch their blogs. Companies are announcing new features, and releasing product updates and other news that can give you some insight into what they do and are going to do.
Track Brands
Well, everyone follows the competition, so let’s move on to a more advanced form of competition spying – tracking brands. Companies show what they do and say, but what people say about them. We live in an era where everyone shares information and experience, so people share their opinions about companies.
Find out What Technologies They Use
You know that sometimes a competitor is better at something, for example, marketing. You visit their website and they track you everywhere with specially designed ads that you want to click on. They may be masters of Google remarketing and Facebook remarketing. But you know that this is something else – you see ads not only from their networks but also from others.
Check Popularity
Some companies have thousands of likes on Facebook and followers on Twitter. Does that mean they have multiple audiences and customers? Unnecessary. Often it means that they spend a lot of time developing a social media presence. You need more reliable data to find out how popular your competitors are.
Check Paid Keywords
How do you think your competitors get customers? I’m 95% sure – they run AdWords. Everyone runs AdWords campaigns. Google too.
Google “AdWords” and check the results if you do not believe them. Knowing what keywords your competition uses for search engine ads will allow you to estimate costs and find cheap keywords. You will also find out how your competitors position themselves in the market.
Check SEO
You may be wondering how your competitors get so many users. As already mentioned they can run AdWords but no one can buy 100% traffic. The answer is often the same – organic traffic from search engines.
Check Display Ads
The display is a popular and often effective form of advertising. The problem is, you need to know how to do it – you need to create a good and effective ad and put it in the right place. Keeping track of what ads your competition is running will help you develop your strategy – You may find weaknesses in their marketing message or you may have an idea of where to put them to bring in more quality traffic.
Check Backlinks
Finding out who is linking to your competitors’ websites, will give you a clue as to what marketing strategies are working and where it is best to feature. Linking to your website on a popular website among your target audience will give great impetus to the number of visitors and posts, not to mention the benefits to your SEO efforts.
Identify Brand Ambassadors
People trust others, not companies. That’s why it’s so important that people talk about you and recommend you. It’s easy for companies to come to market first – people start using them and tell their friends about them. The problem for market challengers is that people usually stick to the solutions they use.
Cool, but who I should spy on competitors?
If you want to spy on a match, you need to know who to spy on. You may know many competitors who offer similar services, but you will be amazed at how many products and tools there are. I firmly believe that you do not know at least half of the companies that are considered your competitors.
4-tips-to-develop-a-solid-social-media-video-marketing-strategy